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Dear Colleague: It's the Attention Economy, Stupid!
Ok, now that I have your attention, how much attention are you or your sales people receiving from your clients? Are your customers, the advertisers and agencies, paying attention to your media property? Are they paying attention to your sales people? The revenue you generate is intimately related to your share of attention. And the most appropriate way to measure attention earned is sales calls. (continue reading below) |
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Upcoming Public Events & Presentations
Strategic Sales Tactics: The ultimate Advertising Sales Skills Development Webinar Course.
Virtual courses for immediate results; based on proven best practices and strategies to get hard-to-get appointments, change the minds of stubborn prospects who are suspicious of sales people and make sales of integrated multimedia programs.
- Tips and techniques that don't require sales people to change their personality, just understand the process and the customer better.
- Charts and worksheets you can use.
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Media sales people often find themselves in a position of needing to negotiate to close sales. Once upon a time negotiation was not a factor in print media sales, but we can safely say that is no longer the case. However, TV, Radio, Cable and more recently Internet are negotiated media. Even companies like Conde Nast in the consumer magazine industry and Crain Communications, the publisher of Advertising Age in the world of b2b publishing, have found that while they may say they don't negotiate page rates, they do in fact negotiate the so called "value added."
Ironically, your sales people may be negotiating with buyers who have been trained in negotiating strategies. Have you trained your sales people to put them on a level playing field with their prospects?
The scientific study of negotiation has taught us that there are three factors that we can teach easily that lead to winning negotiations. In scientific studies of negotiating strategies and outcomes conducted by Chester Karrass, and explained in his book The Negotiating Game, he shows that across many negotiations,
- He who names their price first, looses.
- He who makes the biggest demand, wins.
- He who makes the biggest concession loses.
ambro.com can train your sales people to understand and use these simple principles and give them real-world tactics that help close business with winning negotiations.
A media-specific negotiating tactic that is important in advertising space or time or Internet media negotiations is to negotiate up, not down. If you have a rate card, or a stated rate, and the customer says it is too high your sales people's first instinct should be to handle it as an objection. (See objection handling strategies here.) The second instinct should be to negotiate up, not down.
What do we mean by "negotiating up?" We mean sticking with the dollar amount of a proposal you may have put forward if and when possible, but adding value into the deal in the negotiating process to preserve the dollar amount but make it a better deal. Frequently media companies can add value to a package that has significant and measureable value to the prospect, but costs the media company zero or next to nothing.
Many very good sales people are very bad negotiators. Because sales people are gregarious and want to please the client, they have a tendency to say 'yes' too easily. But giving them a modicum of negotiating training will level the playing field for them. And every penny of the added revenue - after their commission -- will drop to your bottom line when you get more revenue from essentially the same services. In short, small differences can make a relatively big difference!
Do it yourself, or with ambro.com's help. But be sure to train your people.
Click here to learn more about ambro.com training services.
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 continued from:
Dear Colleague: It's the Attention Economy!
... There is a direct relationship between the amount of time agency and client contacts spend with your sales people, and the amount and size of sales your team will make. The attention equation works in two ways: First, when you or your sales people are interacting with buyers they can develop a relationship and can learn more about the nuances of the client's needs. Only then can they rise above the crowd with RFP responses that win business. Second, of course, is that only in an interactive conversation can you or your sales people persuade. Through a sales call, sales people have the opportunity to open the prospect's mind to see the attributes of your property that make it a superior choice in the buying process.
Yes, I know it is hard to get appointments. But that is why it is important. Because, if you or your sales people are in the client's office discussing their needs with them, you can be sure the competition is not.
Attention from customers these days is scarce and valuable. Customers are under pressure and over-worked. Customers and prospects think they know what they need to know about your property.
Since attention from your customers is scarce, and attention leads to revenue, then we can also say it is valuable. As publishers, we need to take actions and make investments that will either earn more attention from clients, because it will turn into revenue, or we need to make better use of the limited attention we own, again because revenue is at stake.
And yes, I know a great deal can be accomplished over the phone or via the Internet; so-called internet meetings being a great example. You should be using all those tools. But there is no substitute for sitting in a client's office communicating; listening and questioning and selling.
Unfortunately, we compete for attention in a very crowded market. Clients and their agencies, from the top down, are pressed for time. In fact, they'll tell you they don't have enough time to see you and it isn't that important. That is why you need a strategy to get appointments, and to get more appointments.
Training can help you help your sales team win more appointments three ways:
- There is a formula for what to say in a phone call and follow-up email to more successfully get appointments.
- Using a proposed agenda is a powerful way to show your client that you will use their time well, making it easier to get more appointments.
- The meetings you have with your clients and their agency representatives must be about things that interest the client. Too often, sales calls are like bad blind dates; too much talk about your media property, and not enough listening.
Clearly, attention from your customers and prospects is scarce and valuable. In recessionary times, revenue is scarce, too. Winning a greater share of that scarce spending in your market is job one. To win more revenue, win more attention. If you wish to win more attention, invest in your sales staffs with training and resources. Contact us directly for a customized one day seminar or multi-session webinar for your team on winning the attention battle: 541-431-4500, or DanielMAmbrose@ambro.com |
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